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Big drug centre here ? Sunniva Inc ??

A Penticton winery owner who founded a medical marijuana company says he plans to open the largest medical cannabis production facility in B.C. near Oliver on Osoyoos Indian Band land.

Poplar Grove Winery owner Tony Holler founded Sunniva Inc. four years ago as he saw a business opportunity in the burgeoning cannabis industry. “It’s a high growth industry, it’s an exciting industry, and it’s an industry of the future,” Holler said on Tuesday. Holler said the 700,000-square-foot purpose-built greenhouse facilities will use state-of-the-art Dutch technologies.

The total Sunniva Canada Campus is expected to produce 125,000 kg of premium medical cannabis a year and over 35,000 kg of trim used for extraction. If all goes as planned, it will be located on a 39-acre parcel of land in the industrial park north of Oliver. “That industrial park has all of the infrastructure there,” Holler said.

The $100-million facility will be constructed in two phases and would create up to 200 jobs. Holler says odour mitigation will prevent the smell of cannabis from spreading beyond the facility and it will include high-level security.

“It involves cameras, physical security, security guards, all of those sorts of things,” he said. Sunniva Medical Inc., a subsidiary of Sunniva Inc., has a current application for a medical cannabis production licence for the facility to become a licensed producer under the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations in Canada.